Links

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Published

I love to write (which is why I started this blog). However, going the next step and submitting something for publication always seemed like too big of a step. This past January, however, one of my professors handed back a paper I'd written the previous summer and made the comment that he thought what I had written was "publishable." That finally gave me the impetus to give it a try. What did I have to lose? I reformatted the paper, doubled checked it again, and sent it off to LOGIA: A Journal of Lutheran Theology. What a surprise when the Reformation issue arrived this past week and I saw that they had published it! The article is entitled "Romans 7: Personal Struggle, Defense of the Law, or Israel's Struggle?" It arose out of a class studying the "New Perspective on Paul." As one of the 'token' Lutherans in the class (at this Anglican seminary) I decided to defend Luther against the newer 'perspective.' My professor did not entirely agree with my final conclusion, but he was gracious enough to appreciate my argumentation.

If you have ever considered publishing something, be it a full length academic treatise, an article for a popular magazine, a poem, or anything else, I encourage you to take the step and go for it. For most of my life I left what I wrote tucked away in file folders or among the countless documents on my hard drive. My professor gave me the push late in life to make that next step, and that is one of the benefits of going back to school, regardless of your age. We need to be challenged to push ourselves, especially as we get older and more inclined to 'play it safe.' Will I ever submit something for publication again? I'm not sure, but at least I know I can, and that was an accomplishment in itself.